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A former Iranian government official confirmed last week that Israel was right to take seriously the Islamic Republic’s threats to wipe the Jewish state off the map.

Speaking on Syrian News TV on December 11, former presidential advisor Mohammad Sadeq Al-Hosseini suggested that the main motivator behind the recent Iran nuclear deal was US President Barack Obama’s desire to forestall the destruction of Israel.

“Obama had to make a great retreat,” said Al-Hosseini in an interview translated by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI). “[Obama] was forced to accept a handshake from President Rouhani…so that the day would not come when he would be forced to kiss the hands of Hassan Nasrallah and [Ayatollah] Khamenei, so that they would hold their fire in the great war that was prepared to annihilate Israel.”

Israel has been widely criticized for making too big a deal of the Iranian nuclear threat, and for opposing the bargain struck between the West and Iran in Geneva last month, a deal that leaves the Islamic Republic perfectly capable of assembling nuclear weapons in the future.

The West has a long track record of failing to take seriously the hostile pronouncements of Muslim governments and movements when spoken in their native tongue, be it Arabic, Farsi or another. For Washington, it seems, all that matters is what is spoken in English, which makes it entirely too easy for such antagonists to dupe Western powers.

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